... a miscellaneous hodgepodge of various thoughts, loosely held together by the fact that they're all emanating from a single mind. A lighthearted look at the world, a great place to waste a moment or two of your life.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Phones, Froyo, and Dragon Tales

After many long days, and temptations to jump early with a root and unofficial Froyo ROM for my MyTouch 3G Slide, T-Mobile (well, HTC) finally released Froyo (Android 2.2) for the Slide. See: T-Mobile Announcement . Granted, I found that on the HTC web site before (a day before) I got the message announcement from T-Mobile. Yay, progress!

A few things:

1) I guess "move to SD" only moves a portion of the app, still leaving some space requirement on the phone itself (in this regard, Froyo helps, but the memory available on the Slide is still limiting as to the number of usably installable apps; still it's increased with Froyo)

2) WiFi calling says "still uses plan minutes" even though we have a grandfathered "unlimited hot spot" add-on to our Family plan

3) I think I still prefer "Launcher Pro" as my launcher of choice

4) With AT&T's purchase of T-Mobile (http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/20/atandt-agrees-to-buy-t-mobile-from-deutsche-telekom/&category=classic&postPage=1), I still have to wonder whether my phone will ever be running 3G speeds around here; T-Mobile's 3/4G network hasn't been implemented (some military network is still using the bandwidth in this area), and AT&T's 3G is a different spectrum than what this phone supports. Oh well?

I have yet to make use of other new features, such as WiFi hot spot for tethering (no call to do so as of yet), so I can't comment on those features. The first call I made connected to WiFi the other party couldn't hear me, but second call was OK.

Regardless, this breathes new(er) life into my one-penny Slide (yes, I got the phone for a penny, about a year ago). Performance seems slightly better (perhaps from freeing up some memory by moving apps to the SD card), and it'll help with the spotty cell coverage around my house. I still wish i had a rubberized battery cover, as the Slide cover is pretty slick. Also wish I had a battery with a higher capacity, as I've never been impressed with the battery life on the Slide (the old Nokia E-71 was much nicer in this respect).

My nieces are visiting for a couple of days (along with my sis-in-law, while my bro is in Iceland for his job). Tonight we turned on Dragon Tales on Netflix. After watching a few minutes of it, I said, "This is the pilot episode, isn't it?" Followed shortly thereafter by, "It's sad that I can tell that, isn't it?" Both questions were answered affirmatively by all other adults in the room.

Anyway, glad to finally have Froyo on my Slide. Thanks, HTC and T-Mobile!